





: •. ■; 



■"■■■.■k;.->: \v^y.w'; ■■■'■■-:■'■■ 



L '*RAJIV 



Egress 




000 °0fi7S00 





y *!^w'* *\ 







0^ *e> *?XT* A 








*+ C° .1^1* °o 




^ 1 
V 4?*.- til.', i 






































"U-o* 












V-V 




'*V 







*°^k 




/ 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



a Memorial Sermon 



BY 



THE RIGHT REV. THOMAS MARCH CLARE, D.D 



t 



%tyt Strong ^taff Broken : 

A SERMON 



PREACHED IN 



St. John's Memorial Chapel, Cambridge, on the i 3TH 
of February, 1893, 



The Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, 
on the 2 6th of February, 1893, 

En memorg of tfje late 

PHILLIPS BROOKS, 

BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



BY 



fj" 



THOMAS M. CLARK, 

BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF RHODE ISLAND. 



BOSTON: J3/ 

DAMRELL AND UPHAM, 
©Io Comer Bookstore. 
1893. 






THE LIBRARY] 

Of c oifOR * ss 

WASHINGTON 



**$*• 



Copyright, 
By Damrell and Upham. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 031668 



/^\N the 13th of February, 1893, t ne officers, 
patrons, Alumni, and students of the 
Episcopal Theological School, clergy of 
Massachusetts, officers of Harvard University, 
and a congregation of other citizens met in 
St. John's Memorial Chapel to commemorate 
the life and death of their beloved Bishop, 
Phillips Brooks, who had been to the school 
for over twenty years its stanch and devoted 
friend, its faithful officer, and beloved pastor. 

After Evening Prayer the sermon was 
preached by the Right Reverend Thomas 
March Clark, D.D. The sermon is printed 
at the request of the Trustees. 



THE STRONG STAFF BROKEN. 



Jeremiah xlviii. 17. All ye that are about him, bemoan 
him; and all ye that know his name, say, How is the strong 
staff broken, and the beautiful rod ! 

|~ T would be an intrusion for me to come 
■*■ before this congregation merely for the 
purpose of pronouncing a eulogium upon the 
man in memory of whom the service is held. 
It is not needed that any one should write his 
epitaph. It is already inscribed upon the 
hearts of thousands, in characters that will not 
be effaced for many a year. All ye that were 
about him, among whom he has gone as a 
friend, a guide, a teacher, an inspirer, bemoan 
him ; and all that know his name say, " How 
is the strong staff broken, and the beautiful 
rod!" 

The nation has been moved as it never was 
before by any similar event in our generation. 
When Lincoln died a wailing cry went up 
from every village and hamlet, and the land 



was convulsed to its centre ; but here was a 
man belonging to a profession not in the high- 
est favor in all quarters, a minister in the 
Church of God, who could have no hold upon 
the world except that which his character, his 
intellectual might, and his grasp of the hearts of 
men gave him, — one who had done nothing 
but go about his work persistently, patiently, 
earnestly, sincerely; and yet on that Monday 
morning when the lightning wires flashed the 
tidings of his death through the land, men and 
women everywhere were stunned as if some 
sudden blow had struck them ; tears fell from 
eyes unused to weeping ; men of all creeds and 
men of no creed said to each other, " What a 
calamity this is ! " The press responded all 
over the land in one key, and even the rush 
of business life was momentarily suspended. 
From the other side of the Atlantic there came 
an instantaneous response to the thrill which 
moved our souls, showing that other nations 
shared our grief and sympathized with us in 
our loss. And when the hour of his burial 
came, the leading business houses of Boston 
closed their doors, members of the Loyal 
Legion — of which Bishop Brooks was a 
member — stood sentinel over his remains, the 



Commonwealth of Massachusetts was repre- 
sented by its governor, the Legislature of the 
State sent deputies to his funeral, the City was 
represented by its officials, Harvard University 
by its president, overseers, and professors, the 
Episcopal Theological School by its dean 
and teachers and scholars, the Diocese of 
Massachusetts by its clergy and numberless 
organizations; and when the great church was 
obliged to close its doors upon the multitudes 
who crowded the streets, there they waited 
for another and shorter service in the open air. 
One very interesting feature of the day, and 
which I believe is altogether without prece- 
dent, was the opening of prominent churches 
of other denominations for funeral services at 
the hour of the service in Trinity Church. 
There was a time, in days gone by, when it 
could hardly have been believed that the 
pastor of the Old South would have held a 
burial service in his church in honor of a 
bishop of the Episcopal Church. 

It would consume more time than I can 
afford to give, if I should undertake to present 
in any detail the testimonials of love and 
respect that have come from ecclesiastical 
bodies of every name, and from multitudes of 



8 ' 

other private sources. I must, however, be 
allowed to read a few words spoken to his 
clergy by one of our most distinguished 
bishops, not altogether in sympathy with the 
Bishop of Massachusetts in his ecclesiastical 
views, and yet he says of him : " Phillips Brooks 
was the foremost religionist of America, and 
perhaps the foremost exponent of Christianity 
of the whole English-speaking race." Of him 
more than any other man whom the speaker 
had ever known, it might be said, " He walked 
with God." The eminent Roman Catholic 
Archbishop of Philadelphia says, " I knew 
Phillips Brooks only by character and his writ- 
ings. He was one of those men whom you 
feel you ought to have known, and regret that 
you did not. His truly broad, catholic heart, 
and splendid, luminous intellect have left their 
impression for good on the whole country, and 
people of all denominations will mourn his 
loss." 

There must have been something very ex- 
traordinary in the man to elicit such testi- 
monials from such sources as these, and move 
the land to its depth, as his death has done. 

Before proceeding further, there is one 
thought to which I wish to give very emphatic 



expression. In thus honoring Phillips Brooks, 
the nation has done itself distinguished honor; 
and it is a happy omen when the people of a 
great country like ours show themselves capa- 
ble of appreciating such a character as his. It 
is not a tribute to rank or wealth or station or 
office, but it is the recognition of a grand and 
mighty manhood, — a manhood that dared to 
trust itself ; a manhood that dared to stand 
alone, feeling sure of the company of God ; 
not a perfect manhood, — there is no such 
thing as that; Bishop Brooks had some weak 
points, as we all have, but they were spots in 
the sun, which it was hard to detect without 
being " blinded by excess of light." You lost 
sight of them in the encompassing splendor. 

And now what am I, that I should venture 
to say anything more on this occasion than 
what I have already said ? If I have any right 
to speak at all, it is because I feel that I have 
lost one of the nearest and dearest friends I had 
on earth, a rock and defence to me, an inspirer 
of thought, a comforter in trial, and a strong 
staff in the hour of weakness. 

It is as a preacher that Bishop Brooks holds 
the most conspicuous place. I shrink from the 
attempt to describe his preaching. It is as 



IO 



difficult to do this as it would be to reproduce 
in words the impression made by the varied 
harmonies of a grand orchestra. I was once 
asked to write a chapter for a book and give 
" the bottom-line " of his theology. I would as 
soon think of trying to fathom the bottom-line 
of the ocean, or to analyze the highest strata of 
the atmosphere. He was not a man to be 
measured by any conventional rules. There is 
no other preacher with whom he can be com- 
pared. He copied no one, and no one could 
copy him to advantage. Few preachers have 
ever drawn upon themselves as persistently 
as he did ; and so some have said that he was 
not a learned man, because his sermons were 
so free from technicalities, and so sparing in 
citations from the Fathers and other ancient 
authors. 

It is easy to say in what he was deficient. 
Some prominent things he omitted to do which 
he might have done very well, if he had 
attempted to do them ; but there were other 
things pressing upon his mind, to which he 
gave the preference. He dealt little in the 
logical analysis of doctrines, and took no special 
interest in taking intricate dogmas to pieces 
and then putting them skilfully together again. 



II 

There was not much of formal argument in his 
discourse ; he could reason very ably when 
he had occasion to do so, but in his ordinary 
preaching he seemed to feel as if he had more 
important work to do, — he did not think that 
the kingdom of heaven could be taken by 
logic. To all appearance, he was not so much 
bent upon communicating his own thoughts to 
others as he was in trying to kindle into a 
blaze the latent sparks of good which he be- 
lieved existed in every man's heart. 

He was not by any means what is popularly 
understood by the term, an eloquent speaker. 
He had no arts of elocution, but rather trampled 
them under foot; his great desire seeming to 
be, just to get his thoughts uttered and brought 
home to the apprehension of his hearers ; for 
which, however, he hardly allowed sufficient 
time. He did attain that at which eloquence 
aims, — the rapt attention of crowded congre- 
gations ; the quick response of hearts, which 
could not help vibrating with his heart, what- 
ever key he struck; the rousing of dormant 
susceptibilities, drowsy resolutions, exhausted 
spiritual forces, — unlocking doors in the soul 
which had long been closed and which the man 
did not wish to have opened, because of what 



12 

might be revealed, — convincing men of sins 
which they had never fairly apprehended before, 
and at the same time disclosing to them capaci- 
ties for good which had never been quickened 
into action. 

Some may have thought that he was not, in 
the old-fashioned sense of the term, a searching 
preacher. However this may be, he certainly 
threw a flood of light into recesses of the 
human heart that are not often disclosed, bring- 
ing into terrible relief a multitude of errors and 
weaknesses and dishonesties and meannesses, 
of which little note is usually taken. The 
building up from the beginning of a holy, 
healthy, vigorous, well-balanced Christian char- 
acter was the great end at which he aimed. 
He once said to me that he thought we had 
very defective views of what salvation means. 
With him, it meant the saving of the soul from 
sin, rather than deliverance from the punish- 
ment of sin ; and in order to the establishment 
of a wholesome Christian life, he relied more 
upon a sound spiritual regimen than he did 
upon the administration of medicine. 

If Bishop Brooks did not dwell upon the 
terrors of the law as fervidly as Jonathan 
Edwards was accustomed to do, it was not 



13 

because he shrunk from declaring the whole 
counsel of God. No one could be bolder in 
denouncing the sins which are most likely to 
be lost sight of and condoned, the sins of which 
the persons he addressed were most likely to 
be guilty. Every sermon seemed to have for 
its object the awakening of some higher aspi- 
ration in man, accompanied by the necessary 
extinguishment of some debasing tendency. 
He may not have occupied himself as much as 
some others in the portraiture of sin and its 
terrible results ; it was his way to exterminate 
the noxious weeds by such careful culture and 
preoccupation of the soil as would leave no 
room for the w r eeds to grow. 

He dealt almost exclusively with positive 
truths, and had little to say in the pulpit about 
heresies and Biblical criticisms and disputed 
dogmas and ecclesiastical expedients. He went 
directly to the reason and conscience and hearts 
of those whom he addressed, revealed them to 
themselves, making them shudder at some 
things which were disclosed, and long to find 
some way of escape. It was thus that he 
preached Christ to them, — not always perhaps 
in the accredited form; but he brought the 
Saviour close home to them, so that they could 



H 

see Him and feel the touch of His healing hand 
and apprehend the power of His cross, — in 
such a way as to lead them to take up the cross 
themselves and follow Him. And all this time 
one could not help feeling that he was not dis- 
charging a mere official duty, repeating some- 
thing which had been prepared to order, but 
that he was uttering himself, giving you the 
spontaneous impulses of his own being. How 
often I have heard him say, " I love to preach !" 
and no wonder that he did. The wonder with 
the listener was, where all these thoughts came 
from ; for there was such a spontaneity in his 
utterance as to make it seem as if he could n't 
help himself. There was a profuseness in the 
freedom with which he scattered his thoughts 
and threw off his illustrations which seemed to 
be almost wasteful. 

It was often very difficult to guess what was 
coming when he gave out his text, but as he 
went on he would extract meanings from it and 
find suggestions in it of which no one else 
would have dreamed; and yet, as he proceeded, 
the hearer felt as if these suggestions were nat- 
ural and obvious enough. It hardly needs to be 
said that he presented few colorless thoughts. 
He was not specially rhetorical, his sermons 



15 

were not over-burdened with imagery, — he 
never dragged in an image merely for the sake 
of exhibiting its beauty ; but all that he said 
was iridescent, so that his discourse, although 
it might not be distinctly pictorial, left the 
vivid impression of a picture on the mind. 
His illustrations were drawn almost entirely 
from nature, rarely from history, hardly ever 
from science, and never from the old, patent 
stock of figures which is such an unfailing 
resource to most of us. He clothed his 
thoughts in the drapery of nature, finding 
his material in the ocean, with all its sugges- 
tions of majesty and might, — in the sky, with 
its ever-shifting clouds and radiant sunsets, — 
in the earth, with its hills and valleys and 
silver streams and nestling hamlets. Every 
sound in nature helped to give some musical 
tone to his thoughts, the thunder and the 
storm, the sighing of the breeze, the singing of 
the birds in spring-time, the rustle of the corn- 
field, — all were to him God's symbols, God's 
language ; and he used them all to give life 
and freshness to the mighty spiritual truths 
which he was called to proclaim. 

His teachings revolved invariably about this 
as their centre: We are all God's children, 



i6 

and God cares for all the creatures that he 
ever made, and is waiting for them all to come 
to Him. He is ready to receive them when- 
ever they are willing to return. He took upon 
Himself our nature and appeared in the form 
of a man, in order to show us what sort of a 
life we should lead, and He died upon a cross 
to secure our salvation. This was, in a word, 
the substance of his theology, and somehow 
he managed to make it equally impressive 
whether he was addressing the rudest or the 
most cultivated audience, whether he was 
preaching to the scholarly elect in Harvard, or 
to the Sunday-night grimy crowds in some pub- 
lic hall. He never preached a grander sermon 
than one that he delivered in Boston years 
ago to a great mass of men and women, gath- 
ered from the cellars and slums and all the 
dreariest parts of the city, to hear what he had 
to tell them about God. They must have felt, 
for once in their lives, that there was some one 
in the universe who cared for them. 

If Bishop Brooks had been called to define 
in a word the basis of his belief, he might have 
said : " I believe that the life is the light of men, 
that the final argument for Christianity is to 
be found in the witness of our spirits to God's 



i7 

spirit, the conformity of the gospel to our 
spiritual needs, — our best and highest instincts; 
and when we come to feel that we cannot live 
to any good purpose except as we live in 
Christ, that is enough, — then we can say, 
' One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, 
now I see ; the light has come to me, and it 
could have come only from a divine, super- 
human source.' " 

All the great controversies that are now 
waging about form and creeds and infallible 
standards of truth, the authenticity of texts, 
the inerrancy of the Bible, and decrees of 
Councils and Assemblies, ancient and modern, 
in my view indicate a desire in all quarters to 
find the Rock upon which we may plant our 
feet so firmly that we can never be seriously 
disturbed again. There is a dividing line in 
all enlightened Christian bodies, a right and a 
left in every church that has any life in it, 
whether it be Protestant or Roman, Noncon- 
formist or Anglican. On one side are those 
who believe that the seat of final author- 
ity in matters of religion is to be found in 
something external ; while those who stand on 
the other side believe that the truth of God 
has the witness in itself, and must be authenti- 



iS 

cated by the response of a pure and humble 
heart ; in other words, " If any man shall do 
God's will, he will know of the doctrine, 
whether it is true or false." 

It is not believed by any large number of 
people that the time has come when creed- 
making and ceremonial may be dispensed 
with, — when we may set aside the Scriptures 
as the one great fountain of divine truth, or the 
ceremonial of the Church as the instrument 
for bringing that truth into contact with the 
hearts of men. Such a time will never come, 
but we are approaching the point from all 
directions when the greater part of all the con- 
troversies which rend and agonize Christen- 
dom will be set aside as irrelevant, and unity 
come to the Church, — I do not say return, 
because such a unity has never existed since 
the first era of Christianity ; but it will come 
to the Church by the working of God's spirit 
in the souls of men, bringing them to the 
living, renewing, saving, sanctifying dominion 
of the truth, as it is in Christ Jesus. 

From the beginning, Phillips Brooks has 
stood as the most conspicuous leader of what 
may properly enough be called the experimen- 
tal school of thought, in other words, of a 



19 

religion founded upon experience. He was an 
apostle of light and love and liberty, and it 
was his great aim to bring men into such 
actual sympathy with Christ as to make it im- 
possible that they should ever be disturbed by 
any open or covert attacks of infidelity, any 
questionings of Biblical criticism, or any false 
assumption on the part of the professed de- 
fenders of the faith. He wished that men 
should know the truth by experiencing the 
truth, which, as I have already said, is what is 
meant by experimental religion ; and that is 
the kind of religion which gets the strongest 
hold upon the soul, and lifts it most effectually 
out of the reach of heresy and unbelief. 

The general impression left upon the mind by 
his preaching was somewhat peculiar. There 
is a style of preaching, with which we were 
once very familiar, that seemed as it were to 
leave the soil burnt over ; it scorched the 
sinner, very possibly to his advantage, just 
as the rank grass and stubble in a field must 
be destroyed by fire before the ground is fit 
to be ploughed and sown. This, however, was 
not his special mission. He did not wring the 
soul, as our severer preachers were wont to do ; 
with him " the consuming fire " of which we 



20 

read as one of the attributes of God, was the 
fire that burnt out the dross, purified the soul, 
and consumed the evil that dwelt there. The 
feeling that impressed itself upon the mind 
most forcibly, as we heard him preach, was 
something like this: " What a great thing it is 
to exist! What a grand thing existence may 
be made ! What capacities for good I must 
have which have never been developed ! How 
much I must have lost! I never knew before 
how much I owe to God. I never felt before 
how much Jesus has done for me. Is it too 
late for me to turn ? The preacher says that 
God is waiting for me. I will arise and go 
to my Father, and tell him I have sinned, 
and ask him to take me home." Thousands 
upon thousands have felt all this, and it is 
only in eternity that we shall know what the 
harvest is. 

And he keeps on preaching in this fashion, 
now that his body sleeps in silence ; and multi- 
tudes of people find in his sermons the food 
that nourishes them. They do not go to these 
sermons for the solution of critical difficulties, 
or the exposition of controverted doctrines, or 
for information in Jewish history; but they go 
to be fed, to be built up in faith and love and 



21 

devotion and holiness, to find out what the 
mean things are that are to be avoided, and 
what the grand things are which are to be 
sought after. They go there for their daily 
bread. 

And here I must close all that I have to say 
at present of Bishop Brooks as a preacher. I 
do not like to stop, because I feel that I must 
have treated the subject so inadequately. I 
have found it difficult to say what I wanted to 
say. The subject is too much for me, and now 
I turn to another side of his character, which 
can be more readily disposed of. 

If there was any one thing in regard to 
which he ever showed any sensitiveness, it 
was in what he considered as an underrating 
of his executive ability. Because he was such 
an extraordinary preacher it was taken for 
granted that he could not be much else, and 
on this account it was thought to be somewhat 
doubtful whether he would be competent to 
discharge the duties of the Episcopal office 
efficiently. The experiences of the short term 
of his Episcopate have sufficed to disabuse the 
public mind of this impression. No man could 
be more prompt, methodical, and thorough 
than he was in all the details of duty. He was 



22 

as industrious as any man could be and live, 
always ready to see everybody who called upon 
him ; he never missed an appointment, never 
allowed a letter to lie unanswered for any 
length of time, always responded to every ap- 
plication for pecuniary aid, — of course not 
always favorably ; if he had done so he would 
have had very little left to live upon, — and 
replied in some fashion to all the strange re- 
quests for counsel and information that came 
from every quarter of the globe. 

There are those before me who can testify 
that in the administration of his office he was 
exceedingly scrupulous in regard to all the 
responsibilities which the Church laid upon 
him, and required of his candidates for the 
ministry a very rigid compliance with the rules 
laid down for their guidance. 

He had the gift of organization. He could 
see when any good work needed to be done, 
and then just how it could best be done, and 
then he would go to work and see that it was 
done. He knew how to use the gifts of other 
people, which is one of the secrets of a good 
organizer, and was singularly faithful and 
thorough in following up the work which he 
had laid out. 






23 

I think it would have been better for him 
if he had given a little more time to rest and 
recreation; for he seemed to be at everybody's 
beck and call, and if there was anything to be 
done or said here, there, or anywhere, Bishop 
Brooks was the man who must go to the rescue ; 
and go he did, through rain and storm and 
cold, and no wonder that the light went out so 
early. It was not thinking that shortened his 
life, but working. 

And now I come to the man himself, and 
wish to present in a very plain and simple 
manner what I knew of him personally in the 
ordinary relations of life. 

He was the happiest man that I ever met. 
A little while ago, as I was waiting for him in 
his study, he entered the room and with both 
hands extended, and the most radiant smile 
upon his face, said heartily, " And how do 
you do? Are you perfectly well ? " I replied 
that I was very well. " And are you perfectly 
happy ? " I said that I was burdened with too 
many infirmities for that, and then I added, 
" Are you perfectly happy ? " "I am perfectly 
happy," he answered in a tone of exultation. 
It may be thought by some that there could 
have been little in. his life to occasion unhap- 



2 4 

piness. With such a brilliant career as he had 
had from the beginning, all the time growing 
more and more brilliant, — with no worldly- 
cares to distract him, no pecuniary anxieties, 
no domestic troubles, surrounded by troops of 
admiring friends, healthy, robust, and strong, 
what could there have been to disturb his 
equanimity or give him pain ? It is not to 
be forgotten that for weeks and months the 
shafts of calumny were falling thick and fast 
about him ; he was charged with disloyalty to 
the church of which he was a minister, with 
unfaithfulness to the gospel which he was 
appointed to preach, with false professions 
and unbelief in the creed which he habitually 
recited ; circulars were flying all over the land 
protesting against his admission to the Epis- 
copate ; his own brethren in the faith were 
working against him, earnestly, persistently, 
honestly, conscientiously; and with such a 
nature as his, so finely strung, so sensitive to 
every breath, nothing but the sublimest con- 
viction of right, the most perfect confidence 
in his own integrity, and the firmest persua- 
sion that God was with him, could have 
enabled him to bear the storm of reproach 
without faltering. Only the day before, one 



25 

of the most virulent attacks ever made upon 
him had appeared in the columns of a local 
Church newspaper; but in the midst of the 
severest trials to which he was subjected, I 
never saw him depressed ; neither did he ever 
manifest the slightest symptom of anxiety in 
regard to what might befall him. 

He enjoyed the special duties of his Episco- 
pal office to the full, — those duties which it 
was supposed would be most distasteful to him. 
He often said to me, " I like this going round 
from place to place, and preaching to all these, 
new people ; " and he added on one occasion, 
" I wish that I could have begun this sort of life 
ten years earlier." Little did I think of what 
was coming, when I said in reply, " I think 
that at any rate you have twenty years of this 
life before you." 

He took great pleasure in reading, or rather, 
in absorbing books. He had little time for 
continuous reading, and yet he managed to 
keep himself posted in almost everything that 
was going on in the world of thought, which it 
was of much importance to know. 

The utter absence of self-consciousness, and 
a marked reluctance to talk about himself and 
his doings, was a very striking feature in his 



26 

character. You might be with him for months 
and for years, and never know from anything 
he said that he had had any peculiar experi- 
ences, or had been written about or talked 
about. It was only after the most intimate 
relations had been established that he could 
be induced to tell of the strange things he had 
seen, and the wonderful people he had met. 
At the same time he was very genial and 
companionable, — not so much so, perhaps, in 
miscellaneous society, and on state occasions, 
but no one could be more free and open than 
he was with his friends. He seems to have 
won the hearts of some distinguished men 
who are not regarded as very approachable, 
as the tributes of regard which he received 
from Tennyson abundantly show. He was 
a great favorite with children, and they felt 
sure of having a good time whenever Phillips 
Brooks was coming. He had the keenest ap- 
preciation of real humor, and delight in it, 
although it was not a prominent element in his 
nature, and was rarely apparent in his public 
utterances. I have more than once heard 
him say, " How much this or that man would 
be improved if he had some sense of the 
ludicrous." 



2J 

He had strong affections and strong antipa- 
thies, which he did not always take the pains 
to conceal. It could not be said of him that 
he never found fault with anybody. His 
apprehension of human weaknesses was keen, 
and nothing repelled him more than vain 
pretension, or any indication of unreality in 
a man. His antipathies were not at all based 
upon differences of opinion ; he spoke with 
the greatest respect of some who had attacked 
him most vehemently, and so long as they did 
not assail his moral character, he did not seem 
to care very much how violent they might be. 
Complimentary remarks were usually thrown 
away upon him, — the abundant adulation that 
he received made no more impression than the 
rain upon a rock ; and criticism, unless it was 
unjust and malicious, gave him no offence. He 
was, however, capable of intense indignation, and 
I have once or twice seen him in a white heat, 
when he certainly did not measure his words. 
He might have been a master of refined invec- 
tive, but for the restraining influence of other 
qualities. I feel bound in justice to say that 
his was always a righteous indignation. 

When he had once made up his mind in 
any direction, he was not a man to be easily 



28 

influenced, as I have had abundant oppor- 
tunity to know; free as he was from all indi- 
cations of self-consciousness, amounting almost 
to self-abnegation, he had implicit confidence 
in himself, and this was one of the secrets of 
his power. I have often begged him to say a 
word or two, or to allow me to do it for him, 
which I knew would greatly relieve the minds 
of some honest people who did not understand 
his position, and his uniform reply in substance 
was : " I will never say a word, or allow you to 
say a word, in vindication or explanation of my 
opinions. I stand upon my record ; and by 
that record I will stand or fall. I have said 
what I think and believe in my public utter- 
ances and in my printed discourses, and have 
nothing to retract or to qualify." And so, 
through the whole of the trying campaign of 
his election to the Episcopate, his mouth was 
closed. In a letter, in answer to one that I had 
written, after the whole trouble was over and 
he had entered upon his duties as bishop, 
asking him if he would not comply with the 
wishes of some of his brethren, and say a few 
words at the opening of the Church Congress, 
which he might say with perfect honesty and 
sincerity, and would be very likely to have said 



2 9 

if he had not been asked to do so in vindi- 
cation of his orthodoxy, he at once replied : 
" I shall do nothing of the sort, but shall try 
to say whatever words seem most to befit the 
occasion, without regard to my reputation. 
This sort of thing has gone about far enough. 
And now I propose to go my way and do my 
duty as well as I can, without feeling under 
any obligation to set myself right. Is not this 
the true way for me to feel ? You know it is." 
Bishop Brooks was not in any sense a par- 
tisan. He could see the good in every system 
of theology, if there was any good there, and 
also the bad, if there happened to be anything 
bad there. His eye swept over a large area, 
but he saw distinctly enough whatever he cared 
to see. It would have been impossible for him 
to move within narrow lines, — in a road so 
narrow as not to allow room enough to turn 
aside in order to allow one to pass who hap- 
pened to be going the other way. He believed 
with the Apostle that " God is no respecter of 
persons, but in every nation he that feareth 
Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted 
with Him;" and that if this is true of every 
nation, of course it must be true of every 
church and every community. 



30 

In his view, the value of truth was to be 
estimated by what it could do for man. The 
nature of his mind was such as led him to 
look upon forms and institutions with refer- 
ence to the spiritual work which they were 
likely to accomplish. He loved the Church 
because it was Christ's great instrument for 
the elevation of humanity. He loved the 
Episcopal Church because of its breadth and 
comprehensiveness, because of its sedate and 
solemn services, because of its simple and effi- 
cient discipline, because it rests " upon the 
foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Jesus 
Christ himself being the chief corner-stone." 

His views of the Christian ministry were, 
in the main, those which prevailed in the 
earlier days of the Anglican communion, and 
also, for the most part, in the earlier days of 
the American Episcopate. He believed in 
the Episcopal office, or he would never have 
consented to assume the vows of the Epis- 
copate, — he was too honest a man for that. 
It does not follow that he believed in it on 
the ground which some of his brethren regard 
as indispensable to its existence. 

It is hardly conceivable that a mind like 
his could have been very much absorbed in 



3i 

certain matters of ritual and ceremonial detail 
which have such a singular interest to minds 
differently constituted. 

To a man like this, persons of all conditions 
could go with the hope of relief ; and, as a mat- 
ter of fact, none have sought his counsel more 
eagerly than some who were most antagonistic 
to his views. 

I must be allowed to say a word in reference 
to his extreme kindliness of nature. A feeling 
of delicacy prevents me from illustrating this 
trait of his character as I might have done, by 
events in my own personal experience. This 
great man had all the tenderness of a child ; 
there was no personal sacrifice that he was not 
ready to make, no humblest office that he was 
not willing to discharge whenever he saw that 
his services were needed. I would want no 
gentler hand in sickness, and no softer voice to 
soothe me in the hour of sorrow. His heart 
and his hand and his house were open to 
all ; and into how many a humble dwelling 
he has brought light and comfort and peace ! 
The world at large knew little of his work 
among the poor and the solitary. He has 
kindled the fire on many a cold hearthstone, 
lighted the lamp in many a darkened dwelling, 



32 

clothed many a poor shivering child, and 
poured oil and wine into many a bleeding 
soul. The poor man cried when he heard 
that Phillips Brooks had gone, and the des- 
olate widow felt that there was nothing left 
for her but God. 

In passing on to speak more directly of his 
religious character, I am reminded that he 
would probably say there is no such thing as 
separating one's Christian life from the rest of 
his life ; which is, in a certain sense, undoubt- 
edly true. At the same time he would allow 
that there are certain qualities in our lives 
which are more distinctly religious than others. 
And here I would say, as I have said of his 
saintly predecessor in office, that he was a very 
transparent man, and you could see through 
him, without seeing anything to offend your 
eye. A few weeks ago, as we were conversing 
confidentially in his study, the case of one of 
our clergy was alluded to, who had exposed 
himself to censure by the discovery of some- 
thing wrong which he had done, when, after a 
momentary pause, he said with a great deal of 
solemnity, " How wretched I should be if I 
felt that I was carrying about with me any 
secret which I would not be willing that all 



33 

the world should know ! " The man who 
could say that must have always walked very 
close to God. I think that his singular opti- 
mism and habitual cheerfulness may be attrib- 
uted in a great measure to his having had 
from the beginning but little actual experience 
of sin. 

Of course no one can tell what precise form 
his personal relations to God assumed, but it is 
not probable that he was ever called to undergo 
any of those severe ordeals and terrible agonies 
of conscience which some endure. It would 
rather seem as if he had left himself in God's 
hands, without much concern as to his own per- 
sonal salvation, and given his thoughts almost 
entirely to the salvation of others. His piety 
was of a very natural order, and he must have 
lived in the atmosphere of prayer. His devotion 
was instinctive, rather than formal ; he needed 
no outward accessories in order to find his 
way to God. There was not a tinge of asceti- 
cism in his nature ; he was simply " temperate 
in all things," — enjoying to the full all the 
good things that God had provided for him in 
this world, but never allowing anything to 
come between him and the better things in 
store hereafter. 

3 



34 

He knew very little practically of the sorrows 
of life ; and considering this, the wonder is how 
he ever learned to sympathize as he did with 
the sorrows of others. His career was one of 
unbroken prosperity from the first, rising 
steadily higher and higher all the time, — not 
the sort of career that one might think would 
be favorable to the cultivation of some of the 
Christian graces ; and yet those graces grew 
and flourished in spite of all, — the grace of 
humility and unselfishness and unworldliness 
and restfulness. 

How many souls he has comforted ! How 
many wandering sheep he has brought back 
to the fold ! How many perplexities he has 
relieved! How many souls he has lifted up 
into a purer and serener atmosphere, and 
rescued from the contamination of the world 
and the flesh ! How many he must have 
found waiting for him in Paradise ! 

And now his last word has been spoken, and 
he sleeps in silence. Sleeps in silence, so far 
as our apprehension goes, but he was never so 
living as he is now. Such a man could not 
die. He has only gone to some grander work 
in a higher sphere, — that is all. 



35 

Farewell, my brother ! I shall clasp your 
hand no more on earth ! I shall see that 
bright smile no more ! I shall hear those 
cheering words no more ! 

u Death came unheralded, — but it was well; 
For so thy Saviour bore 
Kind witness thou wast meet at once to dwell 
On His eternal shore; 
All warning spared, 
For none He gives where hearts are for prompt 
change prepared." 



gB~4$ 









\ °»!w? ; ****** 



' tf 







V 




Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proc 

Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 

Sr * ^ ^ Treatment Date: March 2006 



<y <* m XM^>t * &t Treatment Date: March 2006 

PreservationTechnolog 

>jr Sp. *> S *V1'* <^ ^0 * * * °* A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVA 

*■&■ <>, K j£wfe**+ "Ov *<\^>£/\*< 111 Thomson Park Drive 

A* ^ .*T *fiHa - _ ^-^ *jOSA Cranberry Township. PA 16066 



<%,'*•>*& <* '^V* a.C> ^ 



ST^ . ^ ^ 



'<».»« A 



•*!*• V,/ .vs&ftfc ^** :.*2fe* \>/ 



f: "*W 



* 









a0* 



o V 




LIBRARY 







OOBBS BROS. ° 

( LIBRARY BINDING • 

FEB 82 

ST. AUGUSTINE^ 

i0 /^^ IT, A * 



FLA. ' - C K 

32084 "^^ ° / 



